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Oregon Exchanges

For the Newspaper Men of the State of Oregon



Vol. 5
Eugene, Oregon, February, 1922
No. 2



SOME DEVELOPMENTS IN ADVERTISING IN THE LAST YEAR

By G. LANSING HURD, Manager, Corvallis Gazette-Times


[Mr. Hurd made the following address at the recent annual Oregon Newspaper Conference. Most of the advertising developments of the year Mr. Hurd regards as favorable.]

I ASKED some newspapermen about the developments in advertising in Oregon during the last year, and I got very few satisfactory answers. There have been some very substantial and altogether satisfactory developments, both to the publisher and to the advertiser.

For the first of the developments that I would mention here, I choose an improvement in the efficiency of copy-writing. There has been a distinct improvement in the character, quality and effectiveness of the copy of the advertising in both the weeklies and the dailies, and that increase has been larger than the increase in the extent of space sold to the customer.

There also has been a well-defined policy in some places—in Corvallis and Albany, that I am more familiar with and, I have been told, in Salem and Eugene, on the part of the merchants to substitute newspaper advertising for the use of posters, hand bills, catalogues, and things of that sort.



vertising cut service, and also the appli cation of more particular care in the dis play, make-up, and arrangement of the advertising. There have been some increases in rates to the local advertisers; there have

been some increases in rates to foreign


advertisers. But so far as I have been able to learn, the increases in rates to


have been more numerous and more sub


than the increases in rates for foreign


Tvrooaarnr Now Barren

The third improvement is the develop ment made in the typography of adver tising. The advertising in Oregon news papers this last year has unquestionably been distinctly improved through the adoption of the mat service and the ad

local advertisers during the past year stantial.

And they are more important

advertising.

CIRCULATION GAIN Snown Circulations, according to information contained in the Standard Rate and Ad vertising Data Service, have held their own or increased. According to those data no daily newspaper of Oregon has lost materially in circulation, while several have made substantial gains. Some con solidations have brought about very con siderable circulation gains. . . . I think there has been a general de velopment of a better understanding and

an appreciation of the value and possi bilities of local newspaper advertising on the part of very many of the national manufacturers. During the war, when advertising was done by many firms largely to avoid the payment of the excess